AFST 13181 — Black Politics After the Civil Rights Revolution (Pinderhughes)

AFST 13181 — Black Politics After the Civil Rights Revolution

This University Seminar delves into African American Politics after the Civil Rights Revolution. The long centuries of slavery and de jure segregation in which African Americans existed outside of American political institutions, created distinct divisions between dominant views in the nation and Black perspectives on politics. The United States is now in transition from earlier periods when the boundaries of Black politics were very clear, into more recent decades when those boundaries became considerably more permeable.

The course considers how racial and ethnic political officials and organizations tried to solve certain types of problems as they first began to participate in national politics. In the last decade, the nation has dealt uneasily with the election of the first African American President, and more recently with widely discussed police killings of young black men Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many others by local police. The political subject matter explored in the course ranges widely. Electoral and partisan politics, civil society and interest groups, local politics and criminal justice, national public policy, foreign policy and international affairs are important sectors in which African American political interests were represented and controversies developed. Presidential politics including the surprising and challenging transition between the Obama to the Trump administrations will also be discussed.